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I'm trying to expand my understanding of musical forms in contemporary music, and I'm looking for examples of pop music in AABA form. I'm having a hard time distinguishing this structure from verse-chorus structure; conceptually the two make sense, but in practice everything I listen to sounds like verse-chorus.

Check out Vol. 17 No. 3 of Music Theory Online, which deals with form in pop music, but specifically this paper, which addresses exactly what you are talking about. I am assuming you are not familiar with Schenkerian notation, but try to get as much as you can out of the article anyway, and just think of the Schenkerian sketches as reductions of the song to its most basic melodic elements. Let me know if you have questions.

ABSTRACT: In the early music of the Beatles, form, harmony, and voice leading are intricately related. The most common form of this period—AABA where each A section contains an SRDC (Statement–Restatement–Departure–Conclusion) phrase structure as defined by Walter Everett (2001 and 2009)—carries with it harmonic and melodic implications which allow for the creation of a voice-leading model for this form. This paper examines how this model interacts with various songs from the early Beatles catalog. While not every song fits the model perfectly, there is always a dialogue between the model and the specific voice leading and form of the songs in question.

One of the problems I think you're having is that the AABA form has really dropped out of prominence in the past 50 years or so. So the question is, how far back do you go to still consider it contemporary pop? Jazz standards and swing music are frequently AABA, and were pop music of their time, but it's hard to label that contemporary.

Perhaps you want to listen to some swing era stuff to find AABA songs, and establish how that's different from verse-chorus.

Looking more contemporary: I recently wrote a paper about the swing revival musicians, including Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. I used their song "you and me and the bottle makes three" as an example of the merging of AABA form (old swing) with verse-chorus (rock and pop). That song in particular is a great example of that fusion. The instrumental section in the opening is AABA, then the lyrics start. The first two As function as a verse, the B works like a pre-chorus, then the last A is their "chorus." I find this merging of forms to be very interesting.

That's exactly the problem I'm dealing with. The background context is that I'm writing a series of blog articles on musical form to help west coast swing dancers understand how to listen to and interpret music via on-the-fly choreography. WCS is an outgrowth of the traditional swing dances and so I'm ok with pulling out some big band swing to illustrate the ideas, but most of the music danced to today is contemporary top 40.

My goal for this series is to introduce the standard forms in their pure versions (AABA, the extended AABAABA structure), then show how the verse-chorus structure modifies that foundation. Your paper actually sounds really useful; is there a chance you could message it to me?

Curiously enough, I'm a swing dance teacher myself. I'm a Lindy Hopper, and so deal mostly with swing era stuff not modern tunes. I've taught a class based on the two most important forms in swing: AABA and 12-bar blues. The focus was for the social dancers to be aware of musical form and incorporate it into their style and move choices.

I too, sometimes have trouble distinguishing between these two forms. But I think the trick is listening to what function the different sections serve. In AABA, each verse is an arc (or a question and answer), and the middle eight or bridge is usually just a break or contrast. In verse chorus, the arc includes both the verse and the chorus. The verse is like a question and the chorus is an answer. The verse is like foreplay, the chorus is the climax.

There another good source....a woman who writes "how to" books about songwriting, so it focuses mostly on lyrics, but she's really good on AABA vs. verse/chorus. I can't think of her name....oh, it's Davis, and she has two books with the phrase "lyric writing" in the title.

FWIW, it seems to me the Beatles used AABA a lot, much much more than songwriters nowadays. I think it has to do with the fact that everything has moved more in the direction of immediate gratification. I don't want to overdo the analogy, but AABA is more like nutritional food, and verse/chorus can lend itself to songs that are more like junk food, fast and addicting.

Most songs from the great American songbook era are AABA, such as All the things You Are, or Fly Me to the Moon.

You can think of AABA as being like, chorus, chorus, bridge, chorus if it helps you distinguish from verse-chorus forms.

Not many current pop songs use the form; the form relies on a strong, focused melody to work well, and a lot modern pop music has evolved to "hooks" supported by verses, from the hip-hop influence, and has become more focused on rhythm in general, with simpler harmonies and melodies.

I feel like AABA has dropped out of overall form but not out of melodic phrasing form. My vernacular may be inaccurate but I'll explain what I mean. Take this song by Taylor Swift. While the song structure is still verse-chorus, the phrasing in the chorus is as follows.

We are never ever ever getting back together (A)

WeE are never ever ever getting back together (A')

You go talk to my friends talk to my friends talk to me (B)

But weE are never ever ever getting back together (A')

I say A prime because they are slightly different from the original phrase, but close enough that we could still call them A.

I guess AABA in a Pop tune might be a song where you have verses and choruses with the same chordal structure and then a bridge with a different chordal structure. I'm almost sure I can come up with at least one example of this. I'll get back to you.